It didn’t take any arm-twisting when a visitor remarked on a lovely standup parlour piano in the living room of Gatineau mayoral hopeful Clément Bélanger recently.

“Yeah, I play some,” he said, lifting the keyboard cover and comping a few bars of Elvis Presley’s signature tune Can’t Help Falling In Love.

It was a flourishy, polished rendition. You could imagine ice cubes tinkling in glasses in the casino lounge.

Only a cad would think of the song’s opening lyrics: Wise men say, only fools rush in …

Now, Bélanger is no fool.

In many ways, the senior federal public servant is a dream political candidate: youthful, photogenic, well-spoken, beautiful family, a guy who’s worked to develop creative answers to the West Quebec metropolis’ challenges and tried to present them in a logical, respectful fashion. He’s literally a Boy Scout leader, for goodness’ sake.

The trouble is, Bélanger is discovering that logical and respectful don’t necessarily work in politics. Neither do plans without ready-to-go buzzwords or snappy handles.

“I’ve been bumped around a bit, but it’s OK, it’s all new,” the candidate says at his dining room table.

“My approach is quite simple, but so far, I haven’t been able to convey it properly. I’ll say something that’s important to me … but then maybe go on a related tangent (and) I’ll say something else, but related, and that’ll be the thing that gets quoted. It’s juicier in a way.”

Take, for example, the “sugar shack” mess.

Recently, Bélanger was in the middle of a detailed explanation of one of his signature proposals — a regional museum on the grounds of the old Robert Guertin arena, once the “Bob” moves to its new home in a couple of years. The museum was a central part of one of his larger themes of transforming Gatineau into a “Gateway to Quebec,” and would be a portrayal of the region’s roots, history and present. As part of it, and only as an aside, Bélanger says he mentioned it could be fun if a “cabane à sucre” could be incorporated in the downtown facility.

Guess what the headline was in some reports the next day? “Bélanger proposes a sugar shack!”

“The cabane à sucre was an illustration, a fun thing. I still think it’d be a fun thing, but I’m going to be a little more careful with my presentations from now on.”

Bélanger, 43, was born in Ottawa to a former Canadian International Development Agency executive and a mother of Indonesian descent. As a kid, the family moved all over the world and he lived at times in Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere. But one way or another, Hull has always been in the picture.

After late teen years at late-teen-type jobs (everything from garbage collection to construction), his résumé looks like that of thousands upon thousands of politically active types who end up in the national capital.

In fact, it’s a bit of a badge of honour that his first political-type job was 23 years ago as an office worker in the Privy Council Office mail room when Jean Chrétien was the boss. That gig led to a spot inside the Liberal war room during the 1997 campaign when Chrétien was re-elected, a behind-the-scenes look at how politics really work.

Once the election was over, he decided to do a masters in environmental studies and moved down to Toronto.

“I had some spare time so I went down to Queen’s Park. I knocked on Dalton McGuinty’s door and said: ‘You’re my MPP back home, I want to work for you’.” That landed him a volunteer position, then a summer job in 1998.

As for his masters’ studies, that began to lose its shine (“It didn’t turn out to be what I expected”), but it did lead to a job as a research assistant with the late Michael Hough, a noted landscape artist and environmentalist, where he learned all sorts of things on bringing nature back to the cities — themes that remain with him today. The post also led to brushing shoulders with people like David Suzuki and the late Jack Layton, and “great dialogues” on urban development.

During that time, he also worked as an aide to former Liberal MPP and environment critic Dominic Agostino, and then as a financial markets reporter for an investment newsletter, before being laid off when the company was taken over.

His networking continued when he and his wife Me’shel moved back to Ottawa around 2001 to go law school, where his constitutional law prof was Benoît Pelletier, member of Quebec’s National Assembly for Chapleau riding in the Outaouais.

“At the end of the term, I went to him and said: ‘Here’s my exam, and here’s my résumé. If you win and you become a minister, I want to work for you’.”

The Jean Charest-led Liberals won a majority government and Pelletier was named intergovernmental affairs minister and called Bélanger with a job offer in Quebec City. Unfortunately, the Bélangers’ first child, Karl, had been born premature “and we were at CHEO all the time” so he had to turn down the move. But Pelletier countered that he had also been named minister responsible for West Quebec region and would have a “huge” operation in Gatineau, with a spot for Bélanger.

“So it’s politics that brought me to Gatineau,” Bélanger says. “That’s when I became a citizen.”

From there, he followed in his father’s footsteps to the Canadian International Development Agency, and when the federal Conservatives came to power, he was seconded to help rookie minister (and now senator) Josée Verner. After about six months, he was back at the department as a a development officer handling about a dozen projects in Haiti.

Bélanger is now a senior bureaucrat in Public Services and Procurement Canada, and took his holidays to run for office. He says he will take a leave if he wins the election.

The growing family — which now also features a son, Justin, 11, and daughter, Mélodie, seven — first moved to the Templeton neighbourhood in the east end, before moving to a larger home close to the city’s downtown.

Bélanger says his family’s reasons for moving should appeal to many Ottawa families who might be thinking of crossing the border: a truly bilingual atmosphere, “more house for the money,” affordable daycare and other considerations.

“Of course, you pay higher taxes (but) that’s a decision you make as a society and we’re OK with that.

“Gatineau has a different feel from Ottawa, it’s hard to compute, you almost have to live it. And we love it.”

Bélanger would probably do better in this election campaign if he could sit down with each voter for 15 or 20 minutes. His platform is not the old-fashioned style of election courtship but it does start to make sense the more he presents it.

For clarity’s sake, let’s break it down into two broad categories: Nuts and bolts and then the more-exciting wealth creation.

In the first category, it’s pretty simple.

“Services to the citizens, snow removal, water, everything, we have an issue right now and people say the quality is not there … and I feel it myself, taxes are already high.”

Bélanger pledges to bring services up to standards and broadly limit any tax increase to the Bank of Canada’s inflation index. He’s also said that, if elected, he’ll pull back the city’s 2018 budget for a line-by-line reassessment of expenditures, to hone in on any waste or duplication. He’s also a big backer of “intelligent cities” projects, using data as a tool to both plan service requirements and deliver those services.

But anything more specific will have to wait, as he and his team are “still tweaking” the numbers.

If he’s less than fulsome in his fiscal breakdown, he is full of ideas for creating wealth and excitement in Gatineau.

The phrase that keeps cropping up is “Gateway to Quebec.”

“I want to create wealth, bring in more money, focus on economic development centred on tourism. We have so much potential, we have a million potential customers right across the bridges, but I want them to come over and stay for a while, not just cross the bridge and take a selfie with Ottawa in the background.”

And, yes, that would involve the regional museum — and possible sugar shack — on the old Guertin property.

“I picture a living museum, something with a ‘wow’ factor, not necessarily purely historic like Upper Canada Village but something that shows off our DNA and … celebrates our roots and heritage. I’ve travelled a lot and my most memorable trips have been those where you don’t know a place, but when you leave, you feel like you’ve lived it.”

Another Bélanger vision is to build up Gatineau’s position as the “base camp” for visitors to La Belle Province.

“I want us to promote and develop not only as a cultural destination, but as an outdoors destination. There’s fantastic facilities — trails, skiing, incredible golf, everything — not just in Gatineau, but extending way into Quebec. But we would be the first stop on the way to the adventure.” In Gatineau, specifically, Bélanger would like to see a network of pathways linking Aylmer east to Buckingham, more than 60 kilometres, perhaps with more of the trademark covered bridges such as those already in Templeton.

Bélanger’s promotional blueprint would extend to cultural matters.

“(Hull) was once called Little Chicago for its wild nightlife. We’d like to see a lot of that excitement come back.

“(Gatineau) must become a capital of entertainment, in the broad sense, with culture and arts, leisure and sports, outdoors, gastronomy and entertainment. We must give back to Gatineau its soul, the vibe that all the other big cities have.”

“I want to bring this dialogue to a different place, where do we see Gatineau 15 years from now. For one thing, 2025 is the 225th anniversary of (the founding of Hull). If we don’t talk about it now, someone will say in 2022: ‘Hey, we’ve got an anniversary coming up!’ but too late to do anything about it.

“This is absolutely something we can build momentum on, work together towards a project, team with other governments to get funding and build a sense of pride. Look at how great Canada 150 was. Montreal’s 375 made a big buzz.”

He says another underlying theme would be to further integrate “La Grande Gatineau,” to make it more unified after years of amalgamation.

“Aylmer will always be Aylmer, Buckingham will always be Buckingham. We have to be respectful of our diversity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pull together.”

To Bélanger, the post of mayor is more than the nuts and bolts of administration, as important as that is.

“(The other candidates) are talking about roads, talking about libraries, and of course those are important matters.

“But if you want change, somewhere where we’ll be bold in our decisions, take the city somewhere else, then I’m the alternative.”

In the leadup to the Quebec municipal elections on Nov. 5, the Citizen will be casting an eye toward Gatineau and profiling the candidates vying to become the city’s mayor. We’ll also be examining the key issues voters will be grappling with when they go to the ballot box. Stay tuned, as there will be more to come as we inch closer to election day.

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Mayor Jim Watson seems well-rested after recovering from appendicitis. In my interview with him this week, he admitted he couldn’t resist keeping his BlackBerry by his side while keeping a low profile (I guess that
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